---
confidence: experimental
created: 2026-04-02
depends_on:
- three paths to superintelligence exist but only collective superintelligence preserves human agency
- technology advances exponentially but coordination mechanisms evolve linearly creating a widening gap
- multipolar failure from competing aligned AI systems may pose greater existential risk than any single misaligned superintelligence
description: Defines Authoritarian Lock-in as a civilizational attractor where one actor centralizes control — stable but stagnant, with AI dramatically lowering the cost of achieving it
domain: grand-strategy
related:
- attractor-civilizational-basins-are-real
- attractor-comfortable-stagnation
- nation-states will inevitably assert control over frontier AI development because the monopoly on force is the foundational state function and weapons-grade AI capability in private hands is structurally
  intolerable to governments
- lunar development is bifurcating into two competing governance blocs that mirror terrestrial geopolitical alignment
reweave_edges:
- attractor-civilizational-basins-are-real|related|2026-04-17
- attractor-comfortable-stagnation|related|2026-04-17
- attractor-digital-feudalism|supports|2026-04-17
source: Leo, synthesis of Bostrom singleton hypothesis, historical analysis of Soviet/Ming/Roman centralization, Schmachtenberger two-attractor framework
supports:
- attractor-digital-feudalism
type: claim
---

# Authoritarian Lock-in is a stable negative civilizational attractor because centralized control eliminates the coordination problem by eliminating the need for coordination but AI makes this basin dramatically easier to fall into than at any previous point in history

Authoritarian Lock-in describes the attractor state in which a single actor — whether a nation-state, corporation, or AI system — achieves sufficient control over critical infrastructure to prevent competition and enforce its preferred outcome on the rest of civilization. This is Bostrom's "singleton" scenario and one of Schmachtenberger's two "bad attractors."

## Why this basin is stable

Authoritarian Lock-in solves the coordination problem by eliminating the need for coordination. If one actor controls enough of the decision-making apparatus, multipolar traps disappear — there is only one pole. This makes the basin genuinely stable once entered:

1. **Self-reinforcing surveillance**: Control enables monitoring, monitoring enables enforcement, enforcement prevents defection. Historical authoritarian states lacked the technology to make this fully effective. AI-powered surveillance removes this constraint.

2. **Knowledge asymmetry compounds**: The controlling actor accumulates information advantages that make the power differential grow over time. This is the dynamic that made the Soviet intelligence apparatus harder to displace the longer it operated.

3. **Institutional capture**: Once key institutions serve the controlling actor, replacing them requires not just political will but building new institutions from scratch — a task requiring precisely the kind of distributed coordination that the lock-in prevents.

## Historical analogues

**Soviet Union (1922-1991)**: Achieved lock-in through Party control of economic planning, media, military, and political institutions. Stable for 69 years despite massive inefficiency. Failed because centralized economic planning could not match the information-processing capacity of distributed markets (Hayek's knowledge problem, as the manuscript details). Key lesson: *authoritarian lock-in fails when the complexity of the system exceeds the controller's information-processing capacity.*

**Ming Dynasty (1368-1644)**: The Haijin maritime ban (1371) is a purer example — deliberate withdrawal from naval exploration and trade to maintain internal control. China had the world's most advanced navy and abandoned it. Stable for centuries. Lesson: *authoritarian lock-in can sacrifice enormous opportunity cost without collapsing, as long as internal control is maintained.*

**Roman Empire (centralization phase)**: Augustus's transition from Republic consolidated power but created a system dependent on the quality of individual emperors — no institutional mechanism for correction. Stable for centuries but with declining institutional quality.

## Why AI changes the calculus

AI dramatically lowers the cost of achieving and maintaining lock-in by solving the information-processing constraint that historically limited authoritarian control:

- **Surveillance scales**: AI-powered surveillance can monitor billions of people with marginal cost approaching zero. Historical authoritarian states needed massive human intelligence apparatuses (the Stasi employed 1 in 63 East Germans).
- **Enforcement scales**: Autonomous systems can enforce compliance without human intermediaries who might defect or resist.
- **Central planning becomes viable**: The manuscript's core argument about why markets beat central planning (Hayek's dispersed knowledge problem) may not hold if AI can process distributed information at sufficient scale. This would remove the historical mechanism that caused authoritarian lock-in to fail.

## Switching costs

Extremely high once entered. The defining property of lock-in is that the controlling actor can prevent the coordination needed to escape. Historical escapes from authoritarian lock-in have required either:
- External military defeat (Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan)
- Internal economic collapse exceeding the system's ability to maintain control (Soviet Union)
- Gradual institutional decay over centuries (Roman Empire)

AI may close all three exit paths by making the system economically viable, militarily dominant, and institutionally self-repairing.

## Relationship to other attractors

Authoritarian Lock-in is Schmachtenberger's first "bad attractor." It is distinct from Molochian Exhaustion: Moloch is the failure mode of multipolar competition, Lock-in is the failure mode of unipolar domination. They are opposites — Moloch destroys through too much competition, Lock-in destroys through too little. The challenge for civilization is navigating between them.

---

Relevant Notes:
- [[three paths to superintelligence exist but only collective superintelligence preserves human agency]] — why Lock-in via AI superintelligence eliminates human agency
- [[delegating critical infrastructure development to AI creates civilizational fragility]] — the dependency trap that enables Lock-in
- [[voluntary safety commitments collapse under competitive pressure because coordination mechanisms like futarchy can bind where unilateral pledges cannot]] — the alternative to Lock-in

Topics:
- grand-strategy
- coordination mechanisms